Mainova WebHouse’s Vision for Waste Heat Reutilisation
Waste heat reutilisation has become a hot topic for data centres. While many facilities have offered the excess heat to local residents for a sustainable way to stay warm, others have redirected heat to be used in farming and even warming swimming pools. In Frankfurt, the Batschkapp concert hall and its offices receive reutilised heat from the Mainova WebHouse data centre, which is located on the plot next door.
Mainova WebHouse is a data centre provider which focuses on the Frankfurt area, in Germany. It is one of the ten largest in Germany, with the intention to become even more sustainable. It does this by tailoring data centres to the Frankfurt market and developing a toolbox of sustainability measures. The company is willing to indulge in sustainability initiatives and believes in giving back to the community.
Sustainability and community impact at Mainova WebHouse
Juan Bono is the Construction Director for Mainova WebHouse, where he’s responsible for delivering all of the company’s data centre developments safely, on time, to budget and to the right specifications and quality.
In his past experiences, Juan has worked with contractors. Now as a developer with Mainova WebHouse, he sees a different aspect where the company is able to mould projects and developments to be more sustainable and have a positive impact on the communities.
“We have an influence obviously in the design, in ensuring that our emergency power generation is as clean as possible in terms of emissions with implementation of new technologies, SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction) and generators which are able to work on synthetic fuels,” said Juan.
In the construction and data centre fields, the public doesn't always have a clear understanding of what a positive impact they can have on the local community. Part of Juan’s role to make this known.
“The main challenges in my role are to ensure that there's fluid communication and expectations between the different parties,” he explains.
Starting with the architectural and design teams, followed by the extensive supply chain, Juan ensures that everyone understands the goal.
“We're very much engaged with all of the different parties in ensuring that projects are delivered successfully and to the right expectations,” Juan says.
But once the design team, the vendors and the contractors are aligned, the customer is added into the mix and they can sometimes tear everything apart. That's another one of the challenges Juan deals with.
In addition, Mainova WebHouse is affected by the overall challenges in the data centre market, from power scarcity, to available land and supply chain issues.
“We're affected by those overall constraints, as well as the scarcity of talent and the ever growing industry,” Juan adds.
But Mainova WebHouse’s approach in localising the business also gives the company an advantage over the large global players, where the company has better access to its local supply chain and a closer relationship with its employees.
“We take care of our people, we engage with our supply chain, build trusted partnerships and work together with them,” he continues. “I think it's fair to say that we love the underdog market entry.”
It’s fair to say that Juan was raised with such an ethos, as he grew up with his father running his own construction company. Juan’s childhood summers were spent fruit picking or knocking down walls with a sledgehammer.
“That's probably what led not just me, but my other brothers to get into the construction industry,” Juan says. “But I had other dreams. It wasn't just about being an architect… I wanted to build big.”
Mainova WebHouse has already built a relationship where the industry and its customers have come to understand what they can achieve. What the company is now achieving is building an even greater reputation.
Juan turned to civil engineering and moved from Spain to the UK working for a reputable contractor, where he built his first data centre. He also led construction for the Francis Crick Institute, a medical research facility in London.
“I was in direct communication with the users, with the actual scientists who would be then moving into that facility. They were exciting people to speak to, to understand what their needs were.”
It was the first time Juan understood his customers, their needs and that of the building. This is something Juan has carried with him throughout his career.
“That's one of the things that drives me, when I look at a building or a project, I don’t think ‘Oh it's a nice data centre’, I think about how they actually brought it to life and the purpose of the users. That's what data centres are – fast paced moving buildings which provide plenty of resilience to a set of customer’s requirements.”
Meanwhile, Mainova WebHouse CEO Oliver Schiebel’s responsibility is to lead his team, to set out strategies and execute against the global strategy of Mainova WebHouse, which is becoming the most sustainable data centre provider in Frankfurt.
“It's a growing industry, it's also something friends and family can relate to. Everybody uses cell phones and uses video streaming,” Oliver says. “Everybody uses the services that are provided by the digital infrastructure and provided by the digital economy.”
Throughout that evolution, it became obvious what value those services create on the one hand, but also how they can help achieve sustainability goals.
“The obvious example is using video conferences over travelling of course, but if you really follow the whole evolution of digitalisation, there is so much more,” he adds.
Oliver grew up in the eighties, a time filled with great excitement about the potential of computers.
“I was always interested in understanding how a computer really works, how it all comes together. It was not just about the game itself. I wanted to learn about the transfer of data.”
Oliver had the opportunity to work in Deutsche Telecoms Network Management centres, where he learned how a telecommunications network is actually built.
“That helped me throughout my entire career, because understanding how data travels and how data is exchanged is one of the most important things in modern days,” Oliver says. “It's comparatively easy to understand and manage the application because it usually has a graphical user interface for the user to be easy to operate and easy to digest.”
The core Frankfurt market is one of the hottest data centre markets in the world. Mainova WebHouse is currently focused on Frankfurt, as the design and set up is tailored to the wider Frankfurt market, its climate and specifications, in terms of permitting.
“Given our background, we could source enough plots, grid connections and source pipeline projects to allow us to grow the business in the Frankfurt region, we believe that this is where we have an edge over competition.”
This is the location of Mainova WebHouse’s first DC campus, the MWH01.
Mainova WebHouse targets LEED Gold with sustainability measures
Mainova WebHouse’s first campus consists of two buildings, the first building has a capacity of 20 megawatts and the second 10 megawatts IT load. They were originally designed as a co-location setup, but that changed with a tenant being one of the hyperscalers. Mainova Webhouse was able to accommodate the design requirements and finish the build successfully. Both buildings have four floors, maximising the footprint within the plots by building as high as possible. Those particular buildings have a raised access floor as opposed to a standard concrete floor.
“We've been able to also build a basement on the first building, in order to house all of the fuel tanks that would fuel our emergency systems in order to free up part of the external areas,” Juan explains.
In terms of highlights, Mainova WebHouse is targeting PUE of 1.2 on both buildings, using dry coolers and chillers on the roofs and maximising that space. It’s a compact site and design, which has got power strings that deliver directly into the data halls.
“We also have a green wall facade in all of our buildings, photovoltaic panels on the south facing facades, as we are going for our LEED Gold certification,” Juan adds.
This is a part of the sustainability agenda and edge that Mainova WebHouse wants to have as a business, it’s one of its USPs, ensuring that all of the data centre buildings are built to a LEED Gold standard.
“We are using generators which are able to work on synthetic fuels, in order to reduce the emissions from those generators to up to half of the normal emissions,” Juan continues.
In physically constrained areas like Frankfurt, it is very useful to be able to maximise power capacity.
Mainova WebHouse innovates energy solutions
Mainova WebHouse wanted to be the most sustainable data centre in Frankfurt and started by looking at what future regulations would call for.
“We did a lot of brainstorming around how we could attain LEED Gold certification and looked at potential neighbours that we could tap into, in terms of waste heat.”
The agreement for Mainova WebHouse’s waste heat reutilisation with the Batschkapp concert hall came about from a discussion with neighbours. Established in 1976, the Batschkapp concert hall quickly became one of the city’s most iconic landmarks, hosting a range of musical genres, for up to 1,800 people.
“We explained to our neighbours the benefit of waste heat usage and then tested the water with multiple interested parties. The Batschkapp concert hall was the first one that was interested.”
Mainova WebHouse also looked at potential ways in which the company could store energy from regular testing of the generators, and is also increasingly focused on reducing its water consumption
“When we designed the buildings, there were no requirements on water usage efficiency at all, but we all saw that that issue will become more challenging in Frankfurt's future,” adds Oliver.
The team designed the building to collect rainwater to water the green wall facades and outdoor planting on the property.
Mainova WebHouse’s has set up heat reutilisation projects for multiple future DCs.
“More than 50% of the actual waste heat will be delivered to district heating grids in proximity according to the current planning for future DCs,” Oliver shares. “We're actually looking for some of the locations, into two digit megawatt numbers of heating, like 15 megawatts of heating per location or beyond.”
That is quite substantial replacing for mid-sized cities, which typically have gas powered heating solutions that emit carbon dioxide. Mainova WebHouse plans to fully replace them with carbon neutral solutions, provided from the data centres waste.
Powering Mainova WebHouse’s sustainable future with Zwart Techniek and Huawei
Zwart Techniek is a power transmission equipment manufacturing company, based in the port city of IJmuiden in The Netherlands. As a systems integrator for the fuel generators systems, Zwart Techniek has been extremely proactive in the approach from day one, in providing different solutions to sync up with Mainova WebHouse’s sustainability agenda.
“It was through them that we got a lot of expertise in terms of use of SCRs and engines that would be able to work off also on synthetic fuels,” explains Juan.
Zwart Techniek has been a trusted partner in the delivery of their equipment and in coordinating with all the different aspects of it. They also have an office in Frankfurt, which ties into Mainova WebHouse’s ethos of trying to work as local as possible across its supply chain.
“They have been able to coordinate a considerable package from conception through construction and now commissioning at this stage,” he adds.
Huawei came forward for partnership, not just in providing a technical solution for uninterrupted power supplies, but in delivery of its tender process with an Research and Development centre, located in Nuremberg, Germany.
“In a two hour drive, we could actually see the performance of the solution, which at that time, was already fully designed and built up on lithium ion batteries or lipo batteries,” explains Oliver. “They have proven to be very flexible and have also engaged with the design team to understand how we want to use their equipment.”
Mainova WebHouse has found the Huawei team to be a fantastic team to work with and hopes that their partnership will continue.
A leader in the data centre market
Over the next year, Mainova WebHouse will complete its first campus, start its second and potentially the third.
“We will be extremely busy in ensuring that we've successfully handed over to our customers and managed those relationships,” says Juan.
Juan will have a new daughter come into the world in September. Her generation will grow up being warmed by the reutilised heat from the Mainova WebHouse data centre and its many campuses. The underdog market entry Mainova WebHouse took, in engaging with its local supply chain, taking good care of its employees and building trusted partnerships, has paid off.
“We started a bit as an underdog,” says Oliver. “Now, we are developing multiple data centre sites and really becoming a significant player for the Frankfurt market with the focus on that region.”
Mainova WebHouse may be an underdog in the data centre world, but in Frankfurt and across the FLAP market, it is a leader.
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